In the Waiting Room of St Mungo's
by Loki Mischeif-Maker
Summary: After hearing about an attack on the Tonks family, Regulus rushes over to make sure his one time favorite cousin is all right. Once there, however, he winds up trying to comfort Nymphadora.


**Disclaimer:** I am not JK Rowling. This should be fairly obvious, but I still don't want to be sued. . . .

**Author's Note:** I saw the words "Regulus" and "St. Mungo's" juxtaposed somewhere, probably at the MNFF beta forums, and I had to write something to exorcize them. This takes place early in 1979, which makes Tonks about five and Regulus a few months shy of eighteen. So, really, this is about a couple of kids. Enjoy. Cheers! — Loki

* * *

Even as I Apparated into St. Mungo's, I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing. I was still reeling in shock, not so much because of what Bella had told me, but because she actually seemed _happy_ about it.

I only felt nauseated, and he'd married someone who was just my cousin. He'd married Bella's _sister._

Bellatrix aside, it was still bad news, and I hadn't waited around to see if she knew who did it. Andromeda was the only thing on my mind, Andromeda and her daughter and what they must be going through. I'd seen too many widows in the past few months, and I hoped desperately that I wasn't rushing off to comfort another one.

I felt the solid ground of hospital and looked around. Meda and Sirius were by the door to the lift, talking in hushed voices to a healer. That didn't bode well, and I avoided Sirius's blank, terrified gaze. The last thing we needed was another fight, especially in the middle of St. Mungo's with Meda's husband hurt.

Instead, I looked around for Meda's daughter, Nymphadora. While I saw no one who really resembled either Meda or Tonks, there was a young girl sitting alone, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms locked around them. The same blank, frightened expression was on her face as was on Sirius's.

I bit my lip. Nym was five . . . old enough to understand that her dad could be dying. . . .

Before I really knew what I was doing, I strode over to her and tugged my cat, Anna, off of my shoulders, proffering her to the girl. She looked up at me in shock. "What?" she asked in a faint, quavering voice.

"Go on," I muttered, my own voice none-too-steady. "Take her. Sometimes . . . sometimes it's easier to cry into an animal's fur than it is a human shoulder." That was true enough; I hadn't cried in front of anyone but Anna since Sirius had left, at least not in grief. I may have cried in pain in front of the Dark Lord. "Especially when you don't know the human."

The girl reached out and took Anna, lowering the tabby to her knees and stroking her fur mechanically, her mind obviously elsewhere.

Hesitantly, I sat beside her.

After a moment's silence spent staring at her and wishing I had half as much courage— when my father had his heart attack, after all, I'd been sixteen and still raised a much greater fuss, unable to wait patiently for them to do what they could— I worked up the courage to ask, "So . . . has there been any news about your dad?"

She stared at me with over-bright versions of Meda's big grey eyes for a moment before mumbling, "I don't— I don't even _know_!"

A tear finally leaked out and rolled down one cheek. I watched its progress as it dripped off her chin and landed atop Anna's ear. As it hit, the waterworks really started, and she pulled Anna's warm body from her knees to her chest. Anna, who normally didn't like strangers _or_ hysterics, decided to be a princess for this terrified little girl, only looking up occasionally to rasp the tears from her cheeks with her rough tongue.

I'd never been good with tears, and I couldn't think of anything to do but sit and watch as she sobbed herself out, rocking slightly and clutching my cat like a lifeline.

Finally, though, after the tears had subsided into a slight whimpering, I worked up the courage to put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

She looked up and nodded. "It's Daddy I'm worried about."

I bit my lip. "So are we all, Nymphadora," I answered quietly. "So are we all."

While I'd learned from Andromeda's occasional letter that Nym hated her full name, she didn't raise any protests about it, which for a five-year-old attested to the gravity of the situation. She only started a little in surprise. "Who are you?" she asked. "How do you know my name?"

"Your mum's a cousin of mine," I mumbled.

"Oh." She leaned against me a little, and I adjusted slightly so that I had my arm around her shoulders instead of just my hand on the nearest one. "Then Mummy told you? Is . . . is Daddy going to be okay?"

"I . . . don't know," I mumbled, thinking. It wasn't _Avada Kedavra_ or _Imperius_. There was a possibility it was _Cruico_, and I'd heard about its possible long-term effects. Still, that curse didn't normally result in a panicked family flooding St. Mungo's. I really had no idea what a Death Eater had done to him. Even to those eager eyes, hoping for reassurance from an adult— which I wasn't, really— I couldn't give an empty answer. "You're mum didn't tell me what happened."

"Oh." She buried her face in my cloak for a minute, the fear and tears having exhausted her. Her eyes closed for a bare moment, and then flung open again. "I . . . he's got to be okay," she mumbled. "I dunno what Mummy'd do without him."

I didn't know either, since Meda had been willing to give up her family for Tonks. But still, I had to admire the pluck on that girl. Any other five-year-old would wonder what _she_ would do without him, not her mum.

"What's your name?" she added, a bit sleepily. I suspected she wasn't so much interested as trying to keep awake until she got some news about her dad.

"Regulus. The cat's Anna."

"She's a nice cat," Nym told me, still stroking her fur. Anna mewed as if she understood and snuggled a bit against the girl's chest. Nymphadora bit her lip and shook her head as if to clear it. She asked another question just to keep her drooping eyes open. "How'd you get her?"

"Your Cousin Sirius— my brother— gave her to me after his first year of school. He'd been sorted into Gryffindor, after all, and he thought he might need a peace offering," I told her. Part of me wished the girl would nod off— it was so obvious she needed sleep— but part of me admired that stubbornness in waiting for news about Tonks. It was Sirius's stubbornness and Meda's stubbornness, a family trait that seemed to have passed me by entirely.

"You're Sirius's brother? Why don't you ever come to my house with him, then?"

Now I felt _really_ uncomfortable. You can't tell a five-year-old that you thought her mother married beneath her, that aside from Sirius, no one in Meda's family wanted anything to do with Ted Tonks. Especially not when her dad might be dying. Well, Bella might have been able to, but I wasn't Bella, and _I_ certainly couldn't. "I just got out of school, really," I mumbled. "Sirius doesn't live with Mum and Dad and Anna and me anymore."

"Oh." Nym's head lolled against my side again, and for a moment or two I thought that exhaustion might win out over stubbornness. But then she forced her bleary eyes open and her hand moved up Anna's spine, scratching her around the ears. My cat purred.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andromeda break from her hushed conversation and rush over to her daughter. "Nym . . . Nym, Daddy's going to be okay. You can come see him if you want."

Nymphadora wrapped an arm around Anna's middle and leapt to her feet. The cat mewed in alarm, but the girl simply adjusted her grip on my tabby, a wide, sleepy smile across her face. "Yes I want to see him!" Then she glanced back at me and seized the hand that had been around her shoulders. "C'mon, Regulus!"

"Nym, I don't think—"

Meda, however, shook her head. "You, too, Reggie. You came when you heard about Ted. You must have been worried about him."

_I came because I was worried about _you.

The words formed in my brain, but for some reason I couldn't force them through my windpipe. Looking at Meda, swamped with relief and utterly exhausted, just happy I was here with her family, I couldn't tell her I treasured my apathy on the subject of her husband. It was a damn sight better than what Bella or Cissy thought, but now, between the fading fear and exhausted joy, it wasn't enough.

Wordlessly I got to my feet and let Nym drag me up a flight of steps and into Tonks's ward, feeling more uncomfortable than I ever had and playing with my glasses.

Tonks was awake and sitting up in bed, but only because he was propped up with pillows, and his face was pale with blood loss. Bloody bandages were still across his chest— whatever had hurt him couldn't be repaired with magic, apparently. But he was grinning as Nym let go of my hand and sprinted across the room. "Daddy!"

Without a child's fingers in one of them, my hands curled into fists. It looked like _Sectumsempra._ If Snape, who invented the spell, hadn't done this, then it was someone relatively close to him. I was going to have words with him for putting my cousin through all the panic and pain this spell had done tonight.

_How many others have gone through the same thing, and you didn't care because they weren't Meda?_

I pushed the thought out of my mind to deal with later. Just now Meda was all I could handle. Instead I watched Nym set Anna on the bed and start talking animatedly with her father, not really hearing a word that was said.

Andromeda, on the other hand, drifted over to me and wrapped me in a hug. "I still can't believe you came," she mumbled. I felt tears on my shoulder. She was crying with relief.

"Bella told me," I muttered. Someone was going to get it for this. If Bella wouldn't give me a name, Snape was in for it for inventing the damn spell.

"Oh. Does she know who. . . ?"

"I can ask. I didn't wait around for details. Was it . . . was it just Ted, or is anyone else hurt?"

"I . . . I think it was just Ted," Sirius announced. He'd come in after us, and was standing behind me. "He was a bit late getting home . . . and you know they tell you not to walk down Diagon Alley in the dark. . . ."

I nodded. It had been a random attack, then, random and _stupid_. The man worked with broomsticks, for God's sake, so it wasn't as if strategically it had accomplished anything. Someone had done this for _fun_. What kind of idiot—

I pushed away from Meda to rub my head. _My_ kind of idiot. I could easily rattle off half a dozen names, not counting Bella, who might have done this, and a lot of them were friends of mine. It was guilt by association— after all, I _could_ have tipped off the Auror's office . . . or at least done _something _about attacks like this one

"I better go pick Anna back up," I mumbled inconsequently. "The healer's aren't gonna like a cat on a hospital bed. . . ."

I slipped out from between my brother and cousin and headed towards Nym. Sirius put a hand on Andromeda's shoulder, but his eyes followed me.

I didn't realize I was shaking until I'd gathered Anna up in my arms. Somehow I could feel myself vibrating by her skin better than I could in the open air. I brushed the cat hairs off the blankets, wishing there was some way I could walk out. But I couldn't, and when I finally looked up I saw Ted Tonks smiling at me. "I didn't expect you to come," he said softly.

I bit my lip. "How could I not?"

He shook his head. "Nym says she's glad you did. It seems everyone was so busy worrying about me that no one thought to worry about her."

"You've got to thank Anna for that, sir," I mumbled. "She did the comforting. I'm just glad you're all right."

It surprised me a little to realize that this wasn't a token comment, that I really meant it— and not just for Meda and Nym's sake. I'd been fooling myself with my apathy— if someone made my favorite cousin half as happy as Ted had, part of me couldn't help but like him.

But I couldn't say more than that. I turned away and started to leave the room, to get someplace where I could Apparate to somewhere I could think a little more objectively, without this massive guilt choking me.

Sirius chased me down in the hall. "Reggie . . . wait, Reggie!" He caught up and grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around. His grip tightened around my shoulder, and he could keep my from escaping with that alone. He'd always been taller and stronger, after all. "Where are you going?"

"I need to think, Sirius. And I can't in that ward. I'll . . . I'll visit Meda tomorrow, or something. I'll leave the relief to those of you who know him."

He shook his head. "I can't believe you showed up."

For a moment I stiffened, half-expecting something venomous to come out next, since it had to have been a Death Eater that cursed Tonks, and Sirius knew I was one if the other three didn't. Instead, though, he smiled slightly. "Maybe . . . maybe there's hope for you after all. Nym did need someone."

My own lips, trembling slightly, curled upwards into a shaky smile. "Thanks, Sirius," I whispered.

He nodded and let go. "I'll make some excuse to Meda for you. Take care of yourself, Reg." With that, he headed back down the hall towards the ward.

As soon as he'd disappeared, I Apparated out. Not home, though— home had too many distractions, and I really did need to think things through.


End file.
